subject: How Fair Trade Products Are Making Great Kitchen Accessories [print this page] Weve come a long way since the invention of a certain famous plastic box, the one that seals food in an airless environment so it can be kept for weeks, popularised in 1950s TV ads and still one of the most widely used kitchen accessories on the planet. These days, we want to know where our food comes from; where the materials that make our kitchen utensils were sourced; and how the companies that make them treat their labourers. That plastic box might be very useful, but does anyone know whether the people who make it are given a decent living wage? Probably not. Fortunately, the ethical revolution that has taken over our shopping conscience offers plenty of alternatives. Fair trade products have made it into the kitchen.
Kitchen accessories are indispensible household items. A person needs pots and pans in order to cook; plates in order to serve; and utensils in order to prepare and handle food. As such, the objects we buy for our kitchens are among the most widely used products in the Western world. High time, then, that the guilty conscience that has so long overridden peoples choices of luxury items (bath salts, for example, or cloth bags and candles) started to affect their selections of staple goods.
Buying fair trade products as kitchen accessories isnt just an ethical statement, mind. Its true that fairly produced and sold items are better than similar products whose provenance is less noble and the good feeling a person gets from buying into that better way of trading cant be ignored. Unless the products are good, though, theres no point in buying them and thats where fair trade products designed for kitchen use are really making their mark. The ethically sourced kitchen accessories a person can get hold of these days do a lot more than just salve a guilty conscience: they look great and they work even better.
One of the most obvious attributes of fair trade products has always been their trendy or ethnic type, look. The people who make them are no fools, just as aware as any other business that people only buy stuff if its made to look good. One of the best ways of making kitchen accessories (and other ethical products) look good is to brand them with a certain lifestyle: in this case, the relaxed, caring and free lifestyle of the ethical consumer. As such, the fair trade products in question are designed to look a particular way organic, colourful and funky.
Ethically made kitchen accessories have become the lucky totems of a set of circumstances whereby peoples perception of the kitchen as a room has changed, from a factory for meals to a fun place to hang out. Cooking and socialising is now pretty much the same thing so its little wonder that the colourful fair trade products available for kitchen use are proving so popular.
